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Trump's Latest Executive Order Guts Obama-Era Environmental Protections

He's expected to sign a sweeping executive order Tuesday that will require the EPA to review the Clean Power Plan, a crucial Obama initiative that aimed to cut power plants' pollution.

With the swoop of a pen, President Donald Trump is set to dismantle what Barack Obama once hoped would be one of his administration's defining legacies: aggressive environmental protection.

Trump will sign a sweeping executive order Tuesday that will require the Environmental Protection Agency to review the Clean Power Plan, a crucial Obama initiative that aimed to cut power plants' pollution, a senior White House official said Monday. The order will also rescind several Obama-era environmental protections, such as a moratorium on leases for mining coal from federal land and the requirement that federal officials consider the "social cost of carbon" emissions when making decisions.

The goal of the order, the White House official said, was to further domestic energy production, protect jobs, and ensure that the EPA sticks to what the Trump administration believes to be its core mission: protecting clean air and water. It will serve as a blueprint for the Trump administration's energy and environmental policies.

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